Image data bases as part of digital destination management
Over the last several years we have toiled with the administration of images. The file size of one high-quality photo has had a thirtyfold increase over the past 15 years. How many times have hard drives been filled up with images to the point that computers wouldn’t boot up properly? And whenever you needed a specific image you couldn’t find it. Photos were filed in an unstructured manner and not provided with keywords. Furthermore, image rights were either unclear or not disclosed at all.
The solution for a structured administration of images (and other documents) requires a professional and web-based image administration data base, aka digital asset management (DAM). Adobe Experience Manager, eyebase or pixelboxx are well known and often applied systems. Endless online storage space, structured file storage, efficient search and simple sharing with internal and external partners: All that makes image administration so much easier.
However, for tourism destinations the image administration is only one part of the actual task, which is to digitize the entire destination! Images are only an element of the complete data base that is needed to handle future data distribution. The digitization of destinations is too complex and too intertwined to deal with it using several different tools. In this holistic solution images should not only be data with titles and some information. It is essential that the images are linked to other content – ideally, with the element that is pictured on an image (e.g. restaurant, waterfall) or the place where the picture was taken (e.g. market place, viewpoint).
This linkage provides important characteristics that can be automatically assigned to it:
- POI categories (restaurant)
- Name of the restaurant (e.g. Golden Stag)
- The restaurant’s georeference
- Region (community, district, touristic region, state, country, reservation, mountain)
- Content of the restaurant’s description text (e.g. Black Forest gateau)
- Restaurant features (opening hours, costs)
- Evaluations of the restaurant
For example: A future search for an “image with Black Forest gateau” would find said picture without having to manually enter keywords to the image.
This added value provides a connection of the images with the holistic data base:
- Content is provided with fitting images.
- Linked images receive more reachability.
- Sharing images now includes the sharing of complete data sets of content (e.g. the restaurant description text, specialties, opening hours, location, maps, contact details, etc.).
- If you want to share images on a website, it is possible to integrate complete widgets without much effort.
- The reachability of the images creates a report about the different output channels.
The image data base as part of the Outdooractive content management system
As part of the holistic solution Destination Suite, Outdooractive has improved image administration. Images can now be administrated within the same system as your content (POIs, tours, events, offers, accommodations, etc.). Thus, all images that have already been uploaded are now provided in one image data base. Searching, re-using, uploading or linking images to other objects is now a comfortable process. Naturally, images can only be used as simple image files without having to link them to an object. A separate tool for image administration or a digital asset management (DAM) is no longer necessary. One less tool means less costs and more function!
The Outdooractive CMS Media Browser